


What You Know

by elizma_c



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Gentle touches and mutual feelings, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Karen starts confronting her obvious anxiety, Romance, and Frank helps, just let them cuddle and live their lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 19:56:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12848406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizma_c/pseuds/elizma_c
Summary: “When reality feels like its slipping away, hold on to those things that you know are true. You have to focus on what you know.”WhatdidKaren know?Karen knows that she likes to read on the subway. She likes wearing heels that click on the sidewalk. Karen hates exercising but is apparently not a fan of therapy, so she goes running on Saturday mornings. She keeps a .380 in her purse and a pot of dying roses in her window. She has a track record for falling in love with the wrong people. She is fine.She repeats the list in her head each morning when she wakes up, until her hands stop shaking and the knots in her stomach go away.





	What You Know

Karen Page only manages to get through one therapy session.

It was Ellison’s idea, of course. His constant good-natured quips about getting herself into trouble over and over didn’t seem appropriate after a hostage attempt, a bombing, and then another supposed hostage attempt, apparently. He tried to soften the suggestion of seeing a therapist by saying she’d be no good to him if she kept zoning out, or falling asleep at her desk, but the suggestion was real all the same. Try a therapist. Get some rest. Those were her orders.

But apparently Karen isn’t the therapy type, because she decides halfway through the first session that she won’t come back a second time. It’s not that the therapist isn’t nice—she’s plenty nice. It’s the fact that so much of Karen’s issues are redacted knowledge, piled under cover stories and bullshit she’s told the cops, that she just can’t bring herself to hash it all out with a stranger.

Karen thinks that maybe the therapist—a Dr. Foreman or Freeman or something like that—knew that she was losing Karen during the session, because she had said, “Look, Ms. Page…can I call you Karen?”

Karen had nodded, already tired of speaking.

“Karen, sometimes after a trauma our reality can feel so distant that it’s hard to get a handle on what’s real. But the things from our past, the things that are true to our core…those things will always be true. When reality feels like its slipping away, hold on to those things. You have to focus on what you _know_.”

The good doctor had lost her after that, and Karen thought it was all pretty much bullshit. But the last part had stuck with her. What _did_ she know?

Karen knows that she likes to read on the subway. She likes wearing heels that click on the sidewalk. She prefers winter to summer, but dislikes wearing pantyhose during the winter. Karen hates exercising but is apparently not a fan of therapy, so she goes running on Saturday mornings. She keeps a .380 in her purse and a pot of dying roses in her window. She has a track record for falling in love with the wrong people. She is fine.

She repeats the list in her head each morning when she wakes up, until her hands stop shaking and the knots in her stomach go away.

\--

It’s only been a month and three weeks when she sees Frank again.

She’d been working in the meantime, after finally convincing Ellison that the _Bulletin_ really wasn’t better off with her on leave. She’d been in plenty of other traumatic situations before, she’d told him. He had glanced at her pointedly and let it go. In her downtime, she’d searched. For Frank Castle. For Pete Castiglione. There was nothing. 

Madani had been the one to tell her about Frank’s new identity. “He’s practically a ghost now,” she’d said from the hospital bed. Like he hadn’t been before.

That’s how he reappears, too. Ghostlike. 

She’s sitting in a booth at a shitty diner on 53rd on a Monday night, files spread around on the sticky table in front of her. It’s almost eleven thirty, so the streets outside the window aren’t too busy except for the occasional police cruiser and stray pedestrian. She’s still skimming her notes when she feels a presence pause outside the window, but by the time she looks over there is no one there. 

It’s another few minutes before the bell on the door chimes.

He’s let his hair grow out again, but his beard is neater than it was before. He’s wearing a black hoodie totally inappropriate for the cold weather, but underneath that is a green flannel which surprises Karen a little. She’s never seen him in green.

He walks slowly to her booth, and her eyes are on him the whole time. He looks a little apprehensive, which is maybe why he hesitates a little by the booth before sitting down. 

The highlighter she’s been holding has bled a bright yellow circle onto the paper in front of her.

“Karen.”

She can’t help the sigh that escapes her, or the sheer relief she feels at hearing her own name coming out of his mouth. 

Is this reality slipping away? _What does she know?_ Karen likes wearing her hair down. She likes having plants in her house, but she doesn’t like watering them. She likes white roses. She likes crappy disco music and having a gun in her purse. She likes green flannel.

“Frank.” It comes out hushed.

Her world cracks open a little when he gives her a smirk. “Its, uh… It’s Pete, actually.”

She doesn’t allow herself to smile. She’s burning with something that feels like anger but she can’t be quite sure. How can she be so happy and so angry at once? “Where have you been?” she says. “I looked for you. After Central Park…”

That makes the smirk leave his lips. “I had to lay low for a while,” he explains. “I was in bad shape… had to get outta dodge.”

“I could have helped you!” Her voice is suddenly loud again, which makes Frank’s eyes scan the diner briefly before apparently deciding her outburst was called for. Karen gives him an apologetic glance. “I was worried, Frank,” she says lower. “I… I missed you.”

God, what is it about this man? Sure, they can make it through harrowing violence and trauma, but simple gestures of affection render her avoiding his eyes.

He says nothing, but she sees his fingers twitch on the table like they need something to hold onto. She hears him suck in a breath.

“Why now?” she asks, finally meeting his eyes again. They squint a little, like he’s thinking hard about something.

“Seemed like long enough.”

And she can’t help but smile. 

\--

The diner becomes their designated spot to meet. Mondays, as it turns out, are Frank’s most social day of the week. Curtis leads group at eight, so Frank meets her at the same booth as always when he’s done. 

He tells her about the veterans group while they split pots of coffee. He talks about the Liebermans, about Zach and Leo, and sometimes he even mentions his own kids. He tells her about the books he’s reading, the jobs he’s working. Sometimes he holds her hand for a few seconds across the table. He smiles a lot more. 

Karen tells him about the _Bulletin_. She explains the stories she’s working, and ignores his frowns when she mentions the more dangerous ones. Sometimes she talks about Vermont. She tells him about Foggy and Ellison, about how she’s picked up running. She smiles a lot more too. She doesn’t tell him how much she looks forward to her Monday nights, or that at night she dreams about running her hands through his hair.

Those thoughts she keeps to herself.

\--

Their routine stays the same for two months until someone sends a crude bomb to the _Bulletin_ and Frank comes to her apartment that afternoon. 

He’s pounding on the door at around three in the afternoon, only about an hour after Karen was given the all clear to leave the hospital and head back home. As soon as she unlatches the door, he’s pushing past her threshold with both hands on her shoulders. 

“Karen, are you hurt?” He’s scanning her for injuries, eyes wild, and she barely has time to process the goosebumps his hands leave behind.

She swings the door shut behind him. “Frank, I’m fine,” she tells him. “Really.”

Frank’s hands briefly rest on her cheeks before returning to her arms. “Don’t bullshit me.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m not bullshitting you. The package was in the mailroom, nobody was in there. Not even me.”

Frank seems to relax a little and lets his hands fall to his sides. She feels the loss almost immediately but tries not to let it show, even as she stays close in his space. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “What kind of shit have you gotten into now?”

She shrugs. “Probably just some low level criminal who’s pissed about something I wrote,” she says. “Though the package wasn’t even technically addressed to me, so who really knows? Could’ve been for any reporter.”

Frank smiles wanly. “Doubt that.”

“Me too.”

He’s still standing close, so she barely has to move when he drops his forehead against hers like he’d done what seemed like forever ago. Her heart feels like its going to beat out of her chest when she rests her hands on his hips. She can feel a holster at his waist, and in some twisted logic she feels even safer with it under her hand. 

Her hands shake.

Karen Page likes watching old movies. She likes being on her laptop in bed with all the lights off. She likes red wine and black coffee. She likes the smell of gunmetal and she likes Frank Castle under her hands. 

“Can’t keep you safe if you do shit like this,” he says, shaking his head back and forth against hers. 

“You don’t have to protect me, Frank.” 

“Of course I do,” he breathes. 

That makes her lean back and look into his eyes. She’s not sure what exactly she’s looking for. But it’s not his eyes that make her kiss him. Its his hands, loosening their grip on her shoulders and sliding up her neck to rest on her cheeks. They cup her face when she finally presses her mouth to his, gentle until she opens her mouth and they move to her waist. He’s holding her so tightly she thinks there will be bruises of his fingertips tomorrow. The thought makes her kiss him deeper.

After a moment, he pulls away. His eyes look darker than usual as they search hers. “Karen,” he whispers.

Oh God. “Too much?” she whispers, fearing the answer. She’s never wanted to push him, ever. She takes a step back. “Shit, I’m sorry. If you want to go…”

But he takes a step forward, closing the space she’d created. He brushes a piece of hair from her face, and lets his hand rest there. “No, I don’t… I don’t want to go.”

It’s like he’s afraid of hurting her, of all things. Karen, who has stepped on his heart at least twice and who he’s taken a bullet for anyway. They didn’t lie to each other. They put their shit out on a sticky diner table and confronted their demons, bleeding for each other both literally and not. She’s the one whose always afraid. But not of this.

So she presses a kiss to his jaw and says, “Then stay.”

He does.

\--

When Karen Page wakes in the mornings, her hands still sometimes shake. She still has the occasional knot in her stomach. If she’s lucky, the sun will hit her bed and she allows herself to be blinded momentarily by the warmth of it. She recites her list anyway.

_What do you know?_

Karen knows she likes to read on the subway. She likes red wine and black coffee. She likes New York City, but sometimes misses Vermont. She likes writing the news, but prefers not to be it. She likes her .380 in her purse and green flannel. She had a brother. 

She likes Pete Castiglione, but she likes Frank Castle more. She likes the feeling of stubble under her lips. She likes pressing her cold toes into Frank’s calves when they’re sleeping. She loves when Frank kisses her jaw and when he curses into her mouth. She loves his voice when he reads aloud. She loves the smell of gunmetal. She is fine.

Her hands stop shaking.

The knots in her stomach go away.

He sleepily tightens his arms around her waist.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading my first kastle fic, one which I'm sure will be the first of many. Come yell at me about them on tumblr @stranger-harringtons.


End file.
